worker or employee title

[Halgeir Wold]

Hi folks....
I work for a company with international clients and visitors. For the n'th time in my 38 year career with this company, there is a profile change again, involving logos etc etc , and this time also the name of the main company.

We are a rather diverse bunch of people, about 60 in total, ranging from no particular education except general high school to BSC's, MSc's and a few PhD's.....
Some of our employee titles are OK in norwegian, but sounds downright silly in english, be it US or british. Hoping you folks might have some better suggestions... In general, a lot of us have rather a good selection of different hats for diffrent situations......

We have group of carpenters, painters, mechanics etc, with trade certificates. Some do work of a typical janitor, but all do assist or perform special tasks when necesseary. Which common name would be suitable for this group of people?

W also have a small hotel at our premises, but the cleaners ( some also certified) also assist in other work, - reception, in our canteen on occations when there's lots of people on the premises., - and so on and so forth........

I am responsible for electric power installations, communications systems and a fair selection of more or less strange electronic equipment, and a staff of four, BSc by education. By traditional standards, I'd be senior engineer, but because of budgets, economics and planning, as well as work management and organisation, they call me 'manager', - and there's two more of us with different responsibilities....
At 61, I don't really care as long as the paycheck is acceptable.... :) but anyone have any better suggestions...???

TIA

[steven taggart]

I work for a large state agency, and the general term we use for people not having degrees for the job they are doing, IE licensed engineers, is technician. And we use prefixes such as senior or assistant and suffixes such as specialist. For example I am a Construction and Field survey specialist. Grades above me would be Senior construction and field survey specialist, and grades below would be construction and field survey assistant or technician. We also assign grade numbers to each position, 1-8 for technicians. That way jobs in different departments than construction can be assigned different titles, but still have standard pay grades through the organization.

To clarify,

(8) Senior construction and field survey specialist
(6) construction and field survey specialist
(5) construction and field survey technician
(3) construction and field survey assistant

The missing numbers are positions that my division doesn't use, but other divisions do.

Hope that wasn't to confusing

[Jim Rimmer]

Hi folks....
I work for a company with international clients and visitors. For the n'th time in my 38 year career with this company, there is a profile change again, involving logos etc etc , and this time also the name of the main company.

We are a rather diverse bunch of people, about 60 in total, ranging from no particular education except general high school to BSC's, MSc's and a few PhD's.....
Some of our employee titles are OK in norwegian, but sounds downright silly in english, be it US or british. Hoping you folks might have some better suggestions... In general, a lot of us have rather a good selection of different hats for diffrent situations......

We have group of carpenters, painters, mechanics etc, with trade certificates. Some do work of a typical janitor, but all do assist or perform special tasks when necesseary. Which common name would be suitable for this group of people? Maintenace Specialists

W also have a small hotel at our premises, but the cleaners ( some also certified) also assist in other work, - reception, in our canteen on occations when there's lots of people on the premises., - and so on and so forth........ Guest Services Associates

I am responsible for electric power installations, communications systems and a fair selection of more or less strange electronic equipment, and a staff of four, BSc by education. By traditional standards, I'd be senior engineer, but because of budgets, economics and planning, as well as work management and organisation, they call me 'manager', - and there's two more of us with different responsibilities.... Facilities Engineer or Specialist
At 61, I don't really care as long as the paycheck is acceptable.... :) but anyone have any better suggestions...???

TIA

Steven has some great suggestions, too.

[Dave Anderson NH]

You have opened up the proverbial can of worms for those of us who work for small companies. I am a degreed engineer but function as sales manager, occasional purchaser of raw materials, customer applications engineer, and even tool designer. If the need arises I have been know to drive a forklift, operate a milling machine, sweep a floor, and even clean a toilet or a restroom floor. Except for the president (managing director for Europeans) none of us have any titles on our business cards. If I am correct in assuming that the need for titles is to project the correct image, you can pretty much pick anything as long as it sounds impressive to the customer. Such is my sense of cynicism. With some very loyal long term customers I joking describe myself as "Intergalactic Vice-President of Sales and Marketing".

[Jim Koepke]

Gopher covers everything doesn't it?

Maybe call everyone the Get 'er Done of (insert work assignment here) for the day.

jtk

[Steve Menendez]

I'm also a degreed engineer at a small-ish company (100 employees) who is required to "wear many hats" as they say. My title includes the word Manager, but not the word Engineer.

We have engineers who are called engineers, and that's about all they do. If it's not strictly engineering as they define it, good luck getting those guys to get up out of their chairs.

The subtleties of the workplace have changed over the years. In many ways, I think the Manager title conveys the notion that you are responsible for actually getting things done, which is a good thing.

"Engineering" has more connotations as a passive activity, whereas "Managing" implies that the responsibility for getting things done ultimately falls on you.

Steve.